Charles drops me off at my hotel after a silent ride back to London. He seems shell-shocked. Whatever he was expecting to find in Dover, it wasn’t there. He sat hunched forward over the steering wheel during the drive back, both hands curled tightly over the worn leather grip, as if he needed every ounce of focus and determination to escape the event horizon of where we’d just been.
I get out of his car, turn, then lean back down to him.
“You’re not a failure, Charles. You raised your girls the best way you knew how. Some people just turn out…broken. Not everyone can be saved.”
He neither accepts nor rejects this. “Goodbye, Alice.”
I close the door, knowing I have likely seen the very last of the Glassin family.
Up to my room. I grab my laptop, navigate to the forum on MisterTender.com, and direct message Mr. Interested, telling him I want to talk. I’ve come to realize a few things during my visit here, but the one thing that stands out the most is that I’m being very inefficient in achieving my objective. I’m trying to find Mr. Interested and going to great lengths to do so, but the one thing I’m not doing is reaching out to him directly.
I wait a few moments with no reply, so I decide to take a shower. I’m feeling the need to scrub the visit with the twins off my skin. I stand for a long time beneath the jets, letting the steaming water beat against me. When I finally get around to soaping up, I take extra time massaging my scars. They seem bigger today, more pronounced, like ropes of worms breaching the surface of my skin.
I wrap a towel around myself, then check my laptop again. Now there’s a message in the center of my screen.
Are you enjoying your holiday?
I sit on the bed and perch over the keyboard.
How did you know I was here?
Technology, Alice. Your phone gives everything away. Though I have lost track of you. Switched out your SIM card, I suppose, haven’t you?
Of course.
Another message appears.
I haven’t been well.
Good, I think. But I don’t type this. I want to keep him engaged so I can learn enough to find him.
What’s wrong with you?
I’m dying, Alice.
The words sit there on my screen. I stare at them, not knowing if I can believe anything this person tells me. He writes more before I can reply.
Thus, the nature of my urgency.
You mean why you’re stalking me?
I’ve never stalked you. I’ve just wanted to be a part of your life.
Why?
Because you’re special to me.
I don’t understand. Who are you?
Soon, Alice.
I need to get answers, and he does nothing but write in circles.
I visited the twins, I write.
Did you, now? That must have been quite something.
They said you wrote to them. In prison.
Yes, I did. That was a long time ago.
Did you write the original letters to Melinda and Sylvia? Fourteen years ago?
He doesn’t answer, though I give him several minutes. Then I write:
Did you know my family?
Silence.
Finally, he writes:
Did Melinda mention the artwork I sent her?
Okay, at least he’s still here.
I saw it. Sylvia showed it to me. Why?
He’s gone again, and I don’t know if he will answer. I think about the picture, the accuracy with which it depicted me bleeding to death on the footbridge.
Something nags at me. Something I’m not quite get—
And then I know. Oh my God, I think I know.
It was you, I write. You were the one who found me that night. You were the one who called the police.
His reply is immediate this time.
Yes.
That’s why you’re obsessed with me. You were there.
I think back to the trial, to the muffled, anonymous voice on the 999 call. It was definitely male, and the caller said little more than “There’s a girl badly injured in Gladstone Park.” The call had come from a nearby pay phone, from which no useful prints had been recovered.
I saved your life, Alice. I took care of you. I protected you. Every breath you’ve taken since that night is due to me.
And then a horrible, chilling thought: What if he hadn’t found me by accident? What if he knew what was about to happen and wanted to be there? Maybe he wanted to find me, dead or alive.
My chest tightens in that awful, familiar way, and I have a sudden sense he’s watching me. I jump off the bed and check the peephole of the door, but my fish-eye view of the hallway shows nothing. I walk to the other side of the room and peel back the edge of the closed curtain, but see nothing more than the midafternoon bustle on the street. Though if he were out there somewhere, tucked away with a pair of binoculars, I suppose I wouldn’t really know.
I close the curtains, then pace the thin, patterned carpet in front of the television. Calm down, Alice. He doesn’t know where you are. He hasn’t been able to track you after you switched out the SIM card.
Back to my laptop. Enough of this bullshit.
Where are you? I want to meet.
You will meet me before I die. That I promise.
Why not now?
He doesn’t answer my question. Rather, the last thing he writes to me is:
You should visit the site of your father’s murder.
Then, before I can even react to this, a message flashes on my screen. Not from him, but from the private messaging software.
Mr. Interested has left the conversation.